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Few questions about dipoles.

Oatmeal

Active Member
Mar 22, 2009
484
78
38
West Virginia..
As you all no I have power lines running through my back yard, and like to no if a dipole with insulated wire would help in my situation with the noise ?...
 

Oatmeal, you're sure it's the power lines?? I have a nearby noise at my QTH, and when I switch from my vertical antenna to my horizontal dipole it pretty well drops the noise completely. It also depends on the way the dipole is facing as to how much noise it will reject is what I have found also. This may not hold true for your situation, but it might not hurt to try a dipole pointed at 45 degree angle to the power lines and not parallel to them. Try to either stay below or get well above them. Like I said, my noise is from an outside source and it hits me with s3-s5 signal 24/7. Every once in a while it gets quiet.
It's weird but by just flipping to my horz dipole that is facing 45 degrees from the noise, from my vertical, the noise pretty much disappears. I can still barely and I mean just barely hear the noise. It drops all the way down to no real signal per say, or s0. Just a slight buzz. Best tuning to do might be to get a cheap one and place it up and see what happens. They can be had for less then $15 on eBay. Can't hardly build one for the price of some of the ones on eBay!! JMHO and my own experience. Like I said, it might not work at all for your particular noise issue, but it might be worth a shot as you truly never know unless you actually try it. Again, JMHO.
 
I cant hang a dipole here in a vert position, too much metal around here....my 40m homebrew is 20' off the ground and the G5 is 32' off the ground..

The G5, both the legs are bent on it, not enough room to straighten them out...so may end up replacing this with a G5 Jr soon, I do have room for it to hang Horz...

Wonder if the Jr would do better than building a fan dipole in my situation ?...

What do you guys think ?..
 
Na, I tried to hang the 40m wire in a Vert, thing I ran into there, wasn't able to get the swr to drop, ended up hanging both legs in the Horz position to get it to tune....it talks good where it is...using just the tuner in the radio have a 1.5 swr on it..
 
I would stay away from the G5rv-jr...go the fan dipole route and add a legs for a couple higher bands to your 40 m dipole. You'll see much better performance with resonant dipoles than with t a G5 jr and a tuner. The additional wires may interact so you might have to do a little adjusting of wire length.
 
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The main reason the g5rv isn't a great on all bands is the coax loss. You can reengineer it by changing lengths if the open feed line and the legs to get the swr reasonable before you connect the coax or run the open feedline all the way on the shack to a tuner. A balanced tuner is nice but if you don't have one use a 1:1 current balun before the tuner. The balun built into most commercial tuners is a joke.

If you like the g5rv design look into converting it to a ZS6BKW. I would also encourage you to build vs buy. Test it with an analyzer before connect the coax and get the swr on the bands you will be using as low as possible. This will take some time trimming the legs and feedline but your coax losses will be much lower than the guy that just takes one out of the bag and connects it to a tuner. Mine doesn't need a tuner on 12,20 or 40.

I read somewhere to use the recommended length of wire for the zs6bkw and trim the feedline for the lowest swr on 40 meters and the other bands will be right. I took the long route to get here but ended up in the same neighborhood. As always, don't forget the 1:1 balun or common mode choke where the open feedline meets the coax.
 
The G5RV was NEVER designed to be an all band antenna. The inventor, Louis Varney G5RV, designed it in 1946 as a 20m antenna with some gain on that band and needed it to fit on his very small lot. It does work to some extent on all bands with a tuner but then again any antenna will do that with a tuner.
 
As you all no I have power lines running through my back yard, and like to no if a dipole with insulated wire would help in my situation with the noise ?...

Do you have enough room to install a 250' SKYLOOP with each side at about 60' long?

Skyloop antennas are very quiet and they might be helpful for your noise issues. Their abilities to RX and TX is also very good.
 
No, don't have room for a loop, love to have one tho.

But may have found away to stretch out my g5rv tho, going to try it anyways soon as it warms up.
 
Update..

I took down the Imax 2k and 40m wire the other day to make room for the G5RV, I just moved the G5RV Saturday, and have both legs stretched out and bought me a LDG AT- Pro2,and it all is working great, this tuner will tune 10-80m bands, with out any problems
 

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